All posts tagged Oculus VR

Virtual-reality headset maker Oculus VR will be making its virtual worlds more three-dimensional and more responsive to gestures with its acquisitions of startup companies Nimble VR and 13th Lab AB, Oculus said. Read More »

Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the Firefox Web browser, missed the mobile boom. It wants to avoid a similar fate in virtual reality, which some see emerging as a platform for distributing digital goods, services and entertainment.

Monday, Mozilla unveiled virtual-reality experiences that can be accessed through the Web and viewed using headsets including the Oculus Rift. One streams a documentary, The Polar Sea, shot using 360-degree filming techniques. Another, Sechelt, lets users fly through a 3-D landscape.

Mozilla also is giving away software for developers to create and distribute virtual-reality content. The goal is to ensure that virtual-reality technology remains widely available to developers and consumers through the Web and isn’t controlled by a handful of companies, said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Andreas Gal. Read More »

The product isn’t commercially available, but the promise of virtual reality seemed very real Saturday to 800 developers who jammed a Hollywood, Calif., hotel conference center to see the latest prototype headset from Oculus.

Oculus leapt to the forefront of the nascent field when it was acquired by Facebook in March for $2 billion. Saturday, attendees at Oculus Connect, the company’s first conference, lined up to try the new device, nicknamed “Crescent Bay,” hoping to escape into impossible, dream-like dimensions in ways that weren’t possible five years ago, or even five days ago.

Developers didn’t set up booths. Instead, they sat on the floor hardware meant to work with Oculus or software that can be used on the device, offering demonstrations of varying quality to anyone who walked by. Read More »

Fresh off its move to build “Sky Europe,” British Sky Broadcasting Group Monday said it has invested a further $400,000 into Jaunt, a one-year-old U.S. technology firm developing 360-degree virtual-reality cinema. Read More »

Moves, the fitness-tracking app recently acquired by Facebook, has changed its privacy policy to allow broader sharing of user data, including with Facebook.

As recently as Friday, Moves’s privacy policy said the company did not “disclose an individual user’s data to third parties,” without a user’s consent, unless compelled by law enforcement. The policy said it would stay in place even if Moves were acquired.

On Monday, the policy permitted a wider range of data sharing. “We may share information, including personally identifying information, with our Affiliates (companies that are part of our corporate groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook) to help provide, understand, and improve our Services,” the policy says.

The policy change highlights a tricky subject when Facebook acquires companies. Facebook taps the information its users post to target ads to them. But some of the companies it acquires have made promises not to employ user data for ads, or to share data at all. Read More »

Facebook’s proposed acquisition of Oculus VR was cleared by federal antitrust regulators, a Federal Trade Commission spokesman said Wednesday. The decision came weeks after Facebook’s deal for WhatsApp also got the nod. Read More »

Three months ago, Facebook was a social-media company with a rapidly growing advertising business. On Wednesday, when it reports first-quarter financial results, Facebook will look more like a tech portfolio company making outsized gambles.